


Soft Bells, Gleaming Lights

by blanketed_in_stars



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/F, Poetry, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 16:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5011126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a long winter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soft Bells, Gleaming Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [titaniumlori](https://archiveofourown.org/users/titaniumlori/gifts).



> Dear titaniumlori,
> 
> You said you'd like something about the time frame when they're alone in the woods. I hope this is something like what you had in mind! It's been a treat to write for you :D

_Lights, harsh, and the grate of metal on concrete._

 

Andrea screams herself awake, heart pounding, eyes wide. She can’t see. She can’t—

“I’m right here,” comes the voice out of the darkness.

“Sorry,” Andrea gasps, willing her pulse to slow. She stares into the shadows, trying to see anything, anything at all that isn’t Amy dead, Amy walking, Amy dragging herself forward like some hellish puppet. “Did—did anything hear?”

Michonne shakes her head. “We’re good. Think you can go back to sleep?”

“Um…” She thinks about it for a second, but it’s unnecessary. She knows what will happen if she closes her eyes again tonight. “No. I can keep watch, though. You sleep.”

Michonne gives her a look that’s difficult to interpret in the gloom; Andrea decides it’s uncertainty, and snorts. “I’m capable enough,” she says. “Just ‘cause I can’t use a sword doesn’t mean I’m useless.”

“Never said you were.” The look is gone, and Michonne pulls the blanket over herself.

Andrea settles her back against the tree. It’s worked out well between them, although they don’t talk much. There isn’t much that can’t be conveyed through body language. But then there are times like this, little hiccups where Andrea thinks she might be missing something. Almost as if Michonne wants to tell her something, but isn’t sure how.

But of course that’s ridiculous. The only things Michonne worries about, as far as Andrea’s seen in two months, are the weather and—well, the weather. She doesn’t think she’s seen her get worked up about anything else in all that time. So why would she care about how to break some kind of news, good or bad or in between?

The night is cold and full of little sounds. Andrea keeps her head on a swivel, but they are very clearly alone. Her gaze wanders to the woman sleeping beside her. In dreams she doesn’t look younger, the way everyone is supposed to. No, she only looks kinder.

 

_Cold. Cold metal, cold feet, and the bite burning icy on her shoulder. She grasps the gun with fingers that refuse to bend right._

 

They’ve been running for what feels like hours when Michonne darts into a house and slams the door behind them and their pet walkers. Andrea bends over, hands on her thighs. “Why this house?” she wheezes. “Did you see something I didn’t?”

Michonne shakes her head. “Just needed a break.”

The first walkers slam into the door and begin to scratch. “So this was random, that’s what you’re saying?” Andrea laughs nervously. “Great. We’re trapped.”

“No.” Michonne peers out the front window and leaps back when a decomposing face appears on the other side of the glass. “We’re regrouping. You can’t think like that or they’ll get you.”

Andrea throws herself down on the torn-up sofa. That’s pretty rich coming from someone who was nearly eaten by a five-year-old two days ago. She won’t mention it. It’s not worth the risk of Michonne shutting down again.

But watching her stalk around the room, examining all the potential weapons, Andrea remembers how she was in front of that little boy. Frozen, as if made of plastic, her face contorted into something so painful that Andrea could only drag her along in a mute panic.

Suddenly it clicks.

The child, the wall between them, the way Michonne is now studying the framed pictures still on the shelves, paying extra attention to the one that features a man and woman and in their arms, a newborn baby. Has she been blind, not to have seen it sooner?

“Hey—” she begins, and falters. What is there to say? Questions are useless and it’s not as if there’s much to be gained by commiserating. But now Michonne is looking at her. “This was a good idea,” she says quickly. It was.

Later, fighting their way down the street, she thinks that maybe she should have said something. Should have broached the subject, at least. Funny how she has room in her head for regret with walkers on all sides. But at her back—Michonne, always.

 

_What to say? How to say it? There aren’t words for this, the mess of pain and something like it, but sweeter. No way to say what she knows is true. Only the press of hands and the wrench of a stuttering heart._

 

In this treehouse, Andrea feels young. She feels sixteen and invincible. And she looks out the window and sees walkers below, so she takes another swig of whiskey.

“I had a place just like this when I was a kid,” Michonne says. She gestures at the rain-splotched posters nailed to the plank walls.

Andrea chuckles, though it wasn’t funny. Her eyes struggle to focus through the hazy light of sunset, latching onto shapes they know well—the line of Michonne’s nose, the curve of her thighs. “Lucky. Me and Amy didn’t have that. No place for treehouses in Florida.” She doesn’t realize she’s said the name aloud until it’s too late—it leaves a bad taste in her mouth and a tension in the air.

Michonne, fiddling with the corner of the closest poster, acts as if she didn’t hear.

But—and this is what Andrea kicks herself for, whether she’s nineteen and afraid to lose, or thirty-seven and a bit too complacent—she can’t leave it there. “We were close, growing up. We’d—I don’t even remember what we did. But we were friends, you know?” Michonne still isn’t looking at her, and Andrea finds herself continuing against her better judgement. It’s the whiskey. It’s got to be the whiskey.

“I loved her. I mean, I—I love her. But we were twelve years apart, and I don’t think I said it enough. Not after I went to school.” There’s this feeling she’s getting, like her lungs are shrinking. “And—we were just getting to be good again, we were on a road trip. It was all gonna be okay.”

Here come the tears, now, and she drinks a little more although she knows she shouldn’t. It wasn’t okay. It isn’t. She shies away from the pain and reaches for the closest thing outside herself—“What about you?”

Michonne’s gaze remains fixed on the grimy poster.

“Did you have family?” The answer is there, it’s always been there, and normally she would never ask but tonight the alcohol is giving her a cruel spine. “Or were you always alone? Huh?” She hates the silence, and herself for breaking it. “What about those walkers down there, did you know them?”

A sudden blur of movement, an explosion on one side, and then—reeling, slamming, a riot of pain all through her skull. Andrea puts one hand to her aching face, feeling a cut lip. “I—”

“Shut up,” Michonne snarls. She’s standing over Andrea, breathing hard, and her eyes are glassy. “You don’t want to know.”

Andrea spits a little blood to one side. She’s still crying. “Sorry,” she says, with some difficulty.

Michonne glares and sits down unsteadily, using the wall to lower herself.

“I didn’t want—didn’t mean…” Suddenly she feels sick. It’s not nausea, though. She crawls over to the window and drops the whiskey, hears it hit the grass below. Without looking at her, Michonne offers her own bottle, and Andrea drops that too. They slump against the wall together. Side by side, their knees touch.

After a moment, Michonne slurs, “I don’t talk about before.”

“Why not?”

In the rapidly fading light, viewed in profile, Andrea can only see the glint of Michonne’s eyes as she asks, “Does it make you feel any better?”

And Andrea has to admit, there’s some truth in that.

 

_She thinks of something to say anyways, a little promise or a prayer, disjointed phrases drifting through her rapidly dimming mind. The blood makes her shirt sticky. Opening her mouth, some words come out. “Try not to forget it?”_

 

Michonne cries sometimes, when she thinks Andrea won’t see. But Andrea does, and if not, then she hears. At night it’s the worst, because what do you do in the dark, when everything is muddled and you’re supposed to be minding your own business?

Then one night, curled in the bed of a pickup truck, Andrea wakes up—hours before her turn for guard duty—and wishes she had just stayed asleep. Michonne is crying. No, she’s sobbing, and the sounds tearing out of her are painful to be near.

The old hesitation seizes her, and Michonne looks up and sees her awake. She gulps some air and scrubs her face with vigor. “Sorry,” she mumbles, “don’t—”

But Andrea, drunk on something stronger than whiskey this time, is already moving forward. She puts her arms around Michonne and keeps them there even as she wonders if she’s going crazy. “Don’t be sorry,” she says, awkwardly, knowing it’s too late.

Michonne allows it for a few moments—Andrea thinks she might even lean a little closer—before clearing her throat. “Andrea,” she says, “please.”

Thank god it’s dark. Andrea pulls back to sit next to Michonne, placing her hands in her lap. “Just trying to help,” she says. It’s all she can manage. Her face is burning, her head spinning, and she is trying very hard not to think about kissing the tears from Michonne’s cheeks.

“I know. Thanks.” Michonne sniffs and squares her shoulders. “I can stay up,” she says. “Go back to sleep.”

“No.” Andrea shakes her head. “Get some rest. It’s okay.”

Michonne opens her mouth, looking ready to argue. But after a moment’s hesitation, she nods and looks away. “Thanks,” she says again. She takes the blanket and wraps it around herself as she lies down, head resting on a wadded-up sweatshirt.

Andrea watches the rise and fall of her side beneath the blanket. A stray leaf, left over from autumn, drifts on the wind to land in Michonne’s hair. Andrea reaches out automatically to remove it, just as Michonne lifts her own hand to do the same.

“Sorry,” they say in unison.

If Andrea sits closer to Michonne after that, neither of them mentions it. And if the night feels warmer, well, they don’t mention that either.

 

_Her own thoughts are fading fast, though she can still feel the brush of lips on her forehead. Can still hear that soft voice. “I can’t forget this.” Not this, she wants to say. Us. Don’t let us go. But how can she say that when she can barely open her eyes?_

 

Candlelight flickers over the walls and twists their shadows into bigger and stranger things. Andrea drags her eyes back to the words on the page. She doesn’t have to fear the darkness in here; that’s the whole point. She sighs. Easier said than done.

“I can’t believe you’re reading that,” Michonne says. She shifts position and their legs touch. “I didn’t think you were so morbid.”

“You know me better than that by now,” Andrea jokes. The only things they know about each other are what they’ve gleaned by careful observation—or, in her case, what she’s revealed in a fit of drunken impropriety.

“But really—vampires?”

Andrea shrugs. _“Interview with the Vampire_ is a classic. Besides, you’re reading about the Black Death—I don’t think I’m the morbid one.”

Michonne shakes her head. “No, this is practical information,” she argues. “It’s applicable now. And it’s valuable history.”

Andrea raises one eyebrow. “History doesn’t matter anymore. The whole civilization that created it is gone.”

“Hang on.” Michonne gets up and hurries into the depths of the library. Several minutes later she returns, carrying a book with an old bearded man on the front. “Let me just—” She flips through the pages quickly, then stops, one finger marking her place. She clears her throat and begins to read.

_“Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past_  
      _Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—_  
      _A city in the twilight dim and vast,_  
_With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights…”_

“What is that?” Andrea asks.

“It’s why we can’t forget the past,” Michonne tells her.

“Really?” Andrea sets her own book aside. “I think it’s saying that we _should_ forget it. The past is just a distant city, we can’t go there.”

“It’s about not knowing what to do next,” Michonne explains. She, too, puts her book down, looking directly at Andrea. “The past is—it’s like home.” Her voice is very quiet. “Even if you can’t go there, you don’t ever want to forget.”

Andrea vaguely disagrees, but it takes her a moment to process why, what with their closeness and the dim light and the deep _something_ in Michonne’s eyes. Then it comes to her—this is home, here, now. The past is another country.

And Michonne is leaning closer, closer, the candlelight blurring everything else into insignificance. There is only the pull between them, the force of what they’ve done to each other, the hands on her cheeks and the breath in her lungs and the lips on her own. And the _thud_ of her heart locking into place.

When they break apart, a second or a century later, there is a different sense between them, closer to understanding than the mystery that had been. “What—?” Andrea asks, and realizes that there’s nothing to ask.

Michonne smiles, a glowing crescent moon in the near darkness. She laughs, warm, and closes the distance between them again.

 

_“Don’t worry.” Hands smoothing her hair. “I’ll remember.”_

_Now. She has to do it now, while she still can. Her lungs ache and there’s a peculiar fire spreading through her veins—is this it? She forces her eyes open and sees her—home, here, steady even though her face is a mess of tears._

_The barrel of the gun between her lips is the coldest of all. Her finger tightens on the trigger and the words rise up in a great wave—I love you. I’m sorry. I wish we had more time. I never thought—I didn’t know—I only wanted—I love you. I love you._

_All true, all unspoken. She thinks Michonne hears her anyways._

**Author's Note:**

> Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past  
>      Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—  
>      A city in the twilight dim and vast,  
> With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—  
>      And hear above me on the autumnal blast  
>      The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights
> 
>      — _Mezzo Cammin_ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1842
> 
>  
> 
> [There's a playlist for this fic!](http://8tracks.com/blanketed_in_stars/soft-bells-gleaming-lights)


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